


then fit our vision to the dark

by MercuryGray



Category: Mercy Street (TV), Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Chaplaincy at its finest here, Crossover, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hallway Confessional, Late at Night, Medical Trauma, Self-Doubt, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23656369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: A midnight visitor has Mansion House in an uproar, and Henry Hopkins is worrying about what he's really doing in this war at all.Done for a prompt on tumblr - Mercy Street and Turn Crossover, and the word 'dark'.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8





	then fit our vision to the dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BroadwayBaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/gifts).



> We grow accustomed to the Dark —  
> When light is put away —  
> As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp  
> To witness her Goodbye —
> 
> A Moment — We uncertain step  
> For newness of the night —  
> Then — fit our Vision to the Dark —  
> And meet the Road — erect —
> 
> \- Emily Dickinson

Whoever was at the door seemed intent on breaking it down.

It was only by chance that Henry was even awake at this unholy hour - he’d made the mistake of trying to help transfer a patient out of bed earlier and now there was a blasted ache in the small of his back that would not go away. He’d hoped a walk would settle it, but it was no use - and now this ruckus downstairs! Confound the watchman - was no one there to answer? Henry rubbed his eyes and wrapped his shawl a little tighter, feeling infernally like an old woman as he went downstairs to attend the thing himself before the whole hospital was up, the knocking only getting louder and more insistent.  _ Who on earth is out at this - _

But Henry had hardly pulled back the bolt on the door when it (and he) were pushed aside so two men, one dark and one fair, could come limping inside, one practically carrying the other.

"A surgeon, quickly, man, my officer needs help."

"Issokay, Ben. Imma be fine." The wounded man mumbled into his beard, staggered, and together the two struggled to a chair.

"Mercy." As they came into the light Henry could see that 'help' was an understatement, for the dark man's head was bleeding generously, and his coat was fairly sodden with blood - and gray to boot. 

His friend noticed his look. "Never mind the coat, it isn't his. A surgeon, quickly!" 

"You have one," Foster said, coming down the stairs rumpled and in his dressing gown, and none too happy for being woken, to boot. "And probably half the hospital, too. Now, what's the meaning of waking me up at midnight?"

"I'll have you in front of your executive officer for insolence," the major said, rising quickly to his feet and facing down Foster with a glare that could have started wildfires, the oak-leaved epaulets of a major winking on his shoulders.

Jed, however, was having none of it. "Regrettably, I am the executive officer," he said flatly, an announcement that did not seem to sit well with the other officer, who rummaged, frustratedly, in his pockets, finally producing a letter, which he brandished in Foster's face like a sword.

"This-"(said with the paper an inch from Jed's face) "-is a pass from Hooker saying I'm entitled to whatever resources I require without question or delay," the major said, thrusting the paper at Foster with a hauteur that was both demanding and desperate. "And right now this man requires immediate medical attention!"

Foster glanced quickly at it, the wounded man, and the officer, and decided (sourly) against any further delays. "Bring him here," he said, wrapping the man's arm around his shoulder and hoisting him, once more, to his feet. “Surgery’s on the second floor, we’ll have to chance the stairs. Chaplain, go fetch a nurse - I'm sure someone's out in the corridor looking confused. I'll need lamps in the surgery. He was shot?"

The major nodded, taking his friend's other shoulder and wincing as his friend nearly bellowed in pain. "Just the shoulder, the head's...a cut."

"Cavalry saber, by the looks of things. Up we get."

Another figure appeared on the stairs, lamp in hand. "I heard voices -"

"Matron!" Jed seemed happy for reinforcements, straining under the near dead weight of Mansion House’s newest patient, now being hefted up the stairs. "Not my first choice, but you'll do. I’m to perform an extraction on this gentleman. Help me get him inside. Hopkins, with me, you’re taller and I’ll need the light."

Brannan looked confused in her wrapper and cap as the party went past, realizing, belatedly, where they were headed and leading the way, her lantern a small orange glow on the dark of the stairs, holding open the door as they all headed inside the surgery, Henry following after. “Wait outside,” Foster ordered, sending the major away - and away he went, the door clapping shut behind him.

It was like one of those old renaissance paintings where one wondered who had squandered the candles - one lamp at the tableside and the other in Henry’s hand, sending the dark scene into muted relief as Foster scrubbed his hands and cursed for better light, ordering the Matron to cut away the man's shirt and make the light stop swinging so he could see. Henry did as he was told and steadied the lamp, fixing his eyes on the punched tin pattern on the lid, and the slight shadows moving in Foster’s hair, not daring to look down as Jed’s tools dove in between muscles and bones, the man’s groans the only sign that he was still alive.

And in the dark, they worked.

It felt like an eternity when he was finally released from the surgery, his arm on fire. The man’s head had been bandaged, the shoulder sutured up and packed in gauze. “Take that, will you?” Foster asked, his eyes gesturing to the man’s gray and bloodied coat as he collected his instruments. Outside the windows it was still pitch-black, dawn seeming no nearer despite the passing hours. “I need to wash up. I’m sure his friend outside has some story for it I don’t want to hear.”

Henry had all but forgotten the man that he’d come in with, but he was still outside in the corridor, snoozing fitfully, his long legs stretched out into the expanse of the hallway. There’d been little time to study him on the way in - the yellow of his epaulets (and his boots) proclaimed him a cavalry officer, and a young one, at that. He awoke with a start as Henry tapped his boot. "He'll be fine,” the chaplain offered. “Your friend. Doctor Foster's the best we have."

The major nodded, lips in a tight line, sitting up and unable to meet Hopkins’ eye, his own thoughts obviously far, far away. "Something on your mind, son?" Henry wasn't sure why he'd called him son - the man was easily his own age and several ranks his senior, but something in him in that moment seemed incredibly young, incredibly fragile. 

"I shouldn't have let him go. He’s my responsibility, and I - ”

“You brought him here, as quickly as you could," Henry supplied, as gently as  _ he _ could. “Some men wouldn’t bother.”  _ Many don’t, and they keep me busy enough with condolences.  _ “I’m sure his mother will be grateful.”

The major scoffed, sitting up and folding himself over onto his knees. “His mother’s dead. Father, too. I’m all he has.”

Lord, have mercy. Carrying not just his soldier, but his  _ friend _ half the night while he was bleeding like a stuck pig? “It’s a hard thing, to command one’s friends,” Henry allowed, noticing the young man’s hands seemed not to know what to do with themselves, flexing and unfolding as though they wished to pray but thought the better of it. “Church or chapel, Major?”

“Church,” the man responded, though he didn’t seem to like the fact. “My father has a congregation on Long Island.” He snorted. “He’s against the war, on principle. Hardly wanted any man from town to go, let alone me. I suppose he’d say this was punishment for my pride - or my disobedience, who knows.”

“I think we make our own punishments where pride’s concerned. As for disobedience…” Henry considered. “What made you join the army?”

A pained, pinched look, the kind that comes before a story a man doesn’t like telling.“My father'd say it was boredom. He fought, a little, in Florida, against the Seminole, and he’d tell you war is wasteful, and maybe his war was, but...there’s some principle in this one. Maybe it’s foolish of me, but...it seemed I could make a difference that I couldn’t do behind a desk. Stand up for the things he taught me to believe in - about men being equal in God’s eyes.” There was some light in his eyes as he said it, some faint flicker that made Henry think he actually meant it.

“And not giving up on your friends?” he asked kindly, to which the major nodded, his smile the look of a man who feels seen. “So you’ve obeyed him, but in a different way. God sees that, too, when he marks the score,” he added.  _ Though I’m the first person to forget it, some days. _ “Your friend's alive because you brought him here, and wouldn’t rest until he’d been seen. How God measures it all we can’t presume to know. We can only try to do better tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” the major repeated, as if the word was unfamiliar. "Tomorrow I need to be back with the Army, so I'll put my wounded friend on a horse against the wishes of his doctor, and we’ll be gone like we were never here. That’s not much in the way of better, is it?”

Henry followed all this with a brain sharpened by the lateness and desperation of the hour, trying to add 2 and 2 until it made four, a wrong jacket, a midnight ride, a wound, a letter from the General of the Armies. These men were intelligence officers, and the jacket had been a ruse of war - though evidently one that hadn't worked out well for the man on Foster’s table. He realized he still didn’t know the man’s name, except that the other man had called him ‘Ben’. The youngest of Jacob’s children - the son of days, the ravenous wolf.  _ In the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil _ . Wasn’t that what this man was doing now - dividing the spoils, waiting for morning to devour them? 

“Sometimes we do a little evil to do a greater good,” he said, feeling unequal to this, his back aching anew. He knew now there would be no easy sleep for him tonight.

“I hope you’re right,” the Major said, sitting up. “That jacket should be burnt." He looked up at Hopkins with stone-cold resolve, and Henry remembered he was still holding the blood-stained Confederate uniform - an unwelcome reminder of what had passed. "Do you understand? The surgeon needs to know - we were never here. If there’s a ledger he won’t be on it."

Henry nodded, not wanting to be thought a simpleton. "You'll be needing another, out of the uniform store. I'll see you get it."  _ Food, too - I doubt you’ve eaten much the past day. And a canteen, the water’s cleaner in the kitchen, I’ll fill it there. There’s the furnace near the storeroom - that’ll do. Plenty of rags find their way there. _ His part in the war suddenly seemed small, inconsequential. No great decisions hung on whether or not a man died in a state of grace, or whether his mother received a final letter. All he could do was make sure this man ate, that his friend did not ride away cold. What great ideal was he serving here? 

Foster and Brannan emerged from the surgery, hands finally clean, their washing done, and the Major stood up with determination on his face. “I’m sure you’ve somewhere to be, but let him sleep a little more,” Foster said, his voice firm but kind. “He needs the rest. Stay in the surgery until the morning and we’ll smuggle you out the back.”

The Major's veneer of authority slipped a little in fear, but Foster was too tired to care. “I’m not a simpleton, Major Tallmadge, I do read dispatches from time to time,” Jed said, looking incredibly tired. So he’d seen more of the major’s pass than he let on - or the man on the table had told all. “Hooker’s got scouts on every road from here to the Mississippi. Cavalry scouts, behind enemy lines, and probably in gray coats, too. I’m sure you’ve told the Chaplain what to do with that jacket.” The Major nodded his assent, and Jed looked at Henry, who nodded. “Good. Now, I’m going back to bed. Chaplain, that was a drunk in the street outside, wasn’t it?”

Henry saw where this was going. “We’ll report it to the provost in the morning,” he said smoothly. 

Jed nodded. “Matron, don’t wake me until at least nine, and I don’t care how Hale howls about it.”

And, thus decided, they dissolved, the Major disappearing back into the surgery and Matron and Jed back to their respective rooms, while Henry took the long stairs down to the kitchen and the storeroom, his eyes adjusting to the Stygian gloom of the basement. The furnace had been banked for the night, and he fumbled for a moment with the fire iron, stoking the dull coals until they could consume the bloodied jacket, watching in the dark with tired eyes and meditating on the ways war consumes men, on pride and punishment, and on how this whole war was really just sons disobeying their fathers, over and over again in multitudes.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Oh, lord forgive me, this is not my war and I have played VERY FAST AND LOOSE with the limited history of military intelligence I could get my hands on using the internet.
> 
> Military Intelligence during the civil war was, apparently, a hodgepodge of sources, informants and, during the beginning of the war, rival bureaus - one of which was Pinkerton, interestingly enough. Joe Hooker ('Fighting Joe' for those of you at home) was apparently one of the first commanders of the Army of the Potomac to try and hammer this into something he could use, asking for the information of his scouts, spies, and informants to be processed into reports he could actually use, which is why I've assigned Ben to his army command. To this end, he appoints George H. Sharpe to the brand new Bureau of Military Information, a job in which Sharpe apparently flourishes. Unfortunately, Hooker's command of the army is very brief, and he's replaced in late 1863 by George Meade. 
> 
> So! For the purposes of this story, Tallmadge and Brewster are some of those Bureau of Military information scouts, Caleb has attempted to get information by wearing a different jacket (which, by the way, is very illegal under standard rules of war and would have gotten him shot if he'd been captured) and they were both lucky to escape with their lives only to come tearing into Alexandria late at night so someone can patch Caleb up. 
> 
> I tried to align Tallmadge Senior's time in the Indian wars with a different set of Indian wars - so in this timeline, he's served under Andrew Jackson, which might go some way to explaining his pacifist views.
> 
> Does this align with any major campaign at all? Not a one. Have I only the dimmest grasp of Civil War geography? Absolutely. Does Henry need a very stiff drink now? You bet he does.
> 
> Was it still a lot of fun to write my two favorite churchy, self-doubting historical characters in the same room trading thoughts about war? Why, yes. Yes, it was.


End file.
